Principles Of Internet Governance Dimension Of Open Knowledge Environment In Bridging The Digital Divide

INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM 2010
VILNIUS, LITHUANIA
17 SEPTEMBER ROOM 2
SESSION 18
PRINCIPLES OF INTERNET GOVERNANCE
DIMENSION OF OPEN KNOWLEDGE ENVIRONMENT
IN BRIDGING DIGITAL DIVIDE

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Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during Fifth Meeting of the IGF, in Vilnius. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> GAO XINMIN: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, we will start our workshop.
My name is Gao Xinmin, the vice Chairman of Internet Society of China, as well as I’m a member of the consultative UN information technology and the China Association for Science and Technology. In brief, CAST.
In this workshop we have a remote moderator, Ms. Priyanthi from DiploFoundation. She sits behind us.
I’m very pleased to Chair this workshop. Now, on behalf of the workshop organizer, China Association for Science and Technology, CAST, we welcome you to attend our workshop. Open knowledge environment in bridging the digital divide.
As you know, open knowledge environment is a very important issue for information societies, particularly for creativity and for economics. As the Internet is a critical infrastructure for knowledge disseminations and exchange of ideas, so we put a proposal for IGF to discuss these issues.
Last year, during the last IGF in Egypt, we successfully held the workshop on this same topic. This time we will follow-up with this topic, update your information, and share the same practice experience and offer some references.
Therefore, we are very pleased to invite experts in this field as our panelists.
We have Dr. Liu Chuang, professor of the Institute of Geography and Natural Resources, Chinese Academy of Science. She is also a member of the consultative UN information of technology and the China Association for Science and Technology.
Then we are really pleased to invite Ms. Ana Neves from Pokatel International Affairs, under the Ministry of Science and Technology and higher Education Protocols.
Then we have another very famous professor in this field, professor Tao Xiaofeng from Beijing University of Post and Telecommunication. He also is a member of the Consultative on UN Information Technology and CAST.
Then we are very honoured to invite William Drake as our panelist. He is a senior associate of the Centre for International Governance at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Ou know Mr. Drake is the editor for the IGF for publications.
And we have other speakers, Mr. Wolfgang Kleinwachter. He will come in soon. He is from the Department for Media and Information Science, University of Aarhus, from Denmark. He also is a professor.
Today the workshop will proceed as follows. We first will invite two speakers to make a presentation. After that, we will open the floor for questions and comments. Then after the discussions, short discussions, then we invite more speakers to continue their presentation.
Now, I would like to invite Dr. Liu Chuang, professor Liu, you have the floor.
Please.

>> LIU CHUANG: Thank you. We are glad to be here to share my experience and the topic of the principles of the Internet dimension of open knowledge environment in bridging the digital divide.
The background is why we arise this issue. Actually, this issue was not proposed today. It was several years ago in Tunis, in Geneva, the Summit for Information Society. So UNESCO proposed the concept of knowledge as authority.
We are professors. We are really interested in what this does mean. So I joined these activities. So I think this is really a very important issue.
And I did several surveys in China, South Africa, Thailand, Mongolia, and several developing countries since I was co-chair of CODATA in developing countries. So this is — these are very, very important issues in developing countries.
So after several country workshops since 2002, we have realised that this knowledge has become one of the most important resources and is an engine for research and development for the information and knowledge in society.
So we also understand the knowledge is the accelerator for the discovery for the innovation research.
So, Internet dominance is very, very critical. So in the Internet governance, in the knowledge society, in the knowledge environment, there are several issues, very important. For example, funding issues, institutional issues, capacity building issues, and there are many challenges. However, among them, the most important, and it’s a very critical issue ,is the Internet governance issue, especially for bridging the digital divide.
So last year, in the fourth IGF, we had a similar workshop. We recognized the gaps of the open knowledge environment in bridging the digital divide. So, after that, in this workshop we would like to continue to discuss this issue, not only recognizing the gaps but we want to have common ideas — well, common understanding of what are the principles for how we can work together and have action together to recognize the basic principles for bridging the digital divide.
So, the objectives why we do this, we have three major objectives. One is we would like a call for worldwide awareness for establishing an open knowledge environment in bridging the digital divide for discovery, for innovative research and for development, especially for the minimal development goals.
Second is to provide recommendations to the governmental or intergovernmental decision makers on the open knowledge environment.
And the third one is provide a framework for establishing and improving an integrated and coherence Internet governance system from local, national, regional, or inter-community scale into the global scale. So, this is — these are the objectives of this workshop.
And with this scope — and of course it’s too broad — we wanted to focus on this scope. It’s an open knowledge environment with the Internet. What does that mean? So the scope is integrating openly available scientific data and information resources with open source collaborative tools online for the creation of new knowledge and targeted problem solving, as well as for various forms of post publication follow-up. Actually, this term is — is adopted from the IAP, International Academy of Reporting Infrastructure in ’08. So we all agree with this scope.
Now I would like to talk as briefly, what are the principles we should consider based on our experience during the last few years?
One is establish strategy to improve the science infrastructure in the development work. As most of you know, in most of the developing world, it’s not enough band connection or enough bandwidth connection, and the less information or less knowledge content in the Internet. So it’s very ,very important to have established a strategy to improve the infrastructure for eScience. So we will put this idea here and we will discuss it a little bit later.
From our experience, from China, South Africa, Burundi, Cuba, Mongolia and several others, we realise in enhancing south to south cooperation, multiple channels are very, very important for improving our infrastructure. So this means we signed a bridging the digital divide. It doesn’t mean that it’s developing countries only. It really is worldwide. It’s the developing and developed countries, both sides, we need to work together.
The first one is one of cost. To improve the eScience infrastructure, you need the money. How can we use the limited resources to make the information structure more efficient? So we call this as an end-user priority. So the OKE, Open Knowledge Environment, is in need of money. It really costs. From the China experience, we have several experiences, for example, sometimes they say we are the centre, we need the money. But you have to have the money. So how can we meet the users’ needs? So this is the new tenet. How can we use the money to establish the OKE?
So we decided that the end-user for science, education, we mean — this is all students, all research, all teachers, all professors, and it includes equal access, updated timely knowledge. So there are different models. So other pioneers will have different models in different countries. We think most of them are very efficient. It doesn’t matter what kind of model. But if we want to use, we want to call these users the end-user priority and the end-user priority to set up, establish, and improve the eScience information structure.
The fourth one is the role of data centres, information archive and service centres. Of course, the scientific data, information and knowledge, they need a long-term archive. For example, we need a time series analysis. We need a time series of data and we would like to recall many many years ago records. So how do we make this available? So we need some kind of data archiving centres, information service centres, like that.
So what to do? At least there are two goals. One is a long-term archive. Second is provide the services. Without the services, the archive is not important. Without the archive, the service is impossible. So the two goals are very, very important. Of course, without the data centres, information archives provided in the centre, some in the libraries, without this, the eKnowledge is impossible.
The fifth one is government role for OKE in two different models. Of course, the government plays a very, very important role from China’s experience. Without the government support, it’s very weak for the scientific communities to do this, it’s very weak. We need to work together with the decision makers.
There are two models. One is the full and Open Knowledge Environment. You might call the data centres information centres. They provide information, provide data, all based on the full and open policy we call the full policy as all the information, scientific data, it’s freely and timely and efficient to be accessible.
Another one is open knowledge with charge. That is for the commercial services. It’s for journals, for example, that is the second model. So the two models work very well. I think these two models, and a different one where the government plays a role.
So what is the government doing in the two different models in the Open Knowledge Environment? I think at least the three, at least the three roles. One is the government issue, they have a strategy, must have planning for the whole country’s policy making.
Second, no matter in which model, the government needs to put the money in the environment or support the data centre, the information data centre, give accessibility to deliver the information.
And in the second model, and I think Ana gave an example also, about how in the commercial lines, the eJournal can use it. But to make sure that the end-user can freely access this information.
For example, in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, I’m a professor, so we have an electronic key. So I take the key with me and anywhere I can do my research at the library and library resources.
So this is the government. And how do we make this happen? So with that, we determined what is the government role. So we need to identify and then to emphasize this.
Of course, another one is openness. We emphasize openness, because without openness the efficiency is not possible. So with openness, how about the security? How about the national security, personal security? And the data quality, how do you evaluate the quality? And how to protect the intellectual property, and so on. So several things come. So we have to identify based on the different principles.
So more open is more opportunities. We need to balance the openness and the protection of intellectual property and also the security. All these kind of things are different elements of the Internet governance or the OKE.
Of course, we have distributed centres, distributed information providers in the worldwide. How can we work together? So another principle is interoperability and sustainability, not only for once. We need it long-term to provide the facilities.
For the developing countries, and because the Science and Technology are changing very rapidly, definitely in developing countries, we really need capacity building. So I think this capacity building is always important.
And the last one is to work towards an integrated and coherence policy system. And I think this issue is very very important because sometimes in the top level decision makers, they say this is good. Please go. At the very top — the very bottom users say we usually need it. However, in the middle it doesn’t work, because it’s the policies. So if we want to really make this Open Knowledge Environment efficient, we definitely need an integrated and coherent policy system. Because this is — this is not easy, however, but that is our goal.
Now, I take a case from China to explain why we proposed these principles. Scientific data policy reform of China during the last 30 years changed a lot. I say 30 years, because in China there was economic reform for 30 years. This is a very very important time in China.
Now, before 1978 to now, it’s very important. In the developing countries, it’s very important. Many people are hungry, in poverty, you know, disasters, you know, they lost a lot. We have very big struggles.
So in 1978 China changed policies. But at the same time, two things come to China together. One is the computer. The second is economic reform. Everything comes to China. They realized that the money is good. Everybody wants money. And what could be the results other than to make money? What could it be freely to share for everybody. So, we spent a lot of time to discuss these issues. But this is information.
So in China there are 33 provinces and, you know, if you want to meet to do something, you need money. And people said I have no money, I have time. So this is a duplicated effort and they make the research level very well. And we worked together on how to solve this problem. We worked together on CODATA. So, this picture — so this workshop is really very, very important in China. And this is with professor Ebida from Japan. We invited the experts from the US, from UNESCO, from ICSO, and also we called this work together the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, and all high level experts in China. So we worked together to discuss what could be the strategies for preservation of and the open access to scientific data in China and the developing worlds? After this workshop, the government, scientists had a common understanding.
Yes, China is a big country. China has more and more users that need the data. And making the database is very costly. But to collect the data, very cheap. And China is more than three times researchers than the U.S. So if we use this freely, we can get more efficient. So, this is the national policy change. And also, we draw on the Internet activities. This team, we have a picture, there is the leaders that we worked with at UNESCO, the UN agencies, they worked on the scientific knowledge and the eKnowledge. So we keep the communications.
So then in China, in the Ministry of Science and Technology, we had the most open scientific data policy reform. And then the integration, open access, efficient, and the advantages were recorded in the national plan. This is a new plan, long-term Science and Technology plan.
So then the Ministry of Finance of China then launched a long-term investment programme. So this is — it’s a policy change and the money comes.
Then China signed the Berlin declaration in 2003. So in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and we signed this.
In 2008, China approved the science and technology progress law of China. So this is very important, in this law, and all the different organisations follow this as a high level law. So we follow this law. So the legislation system gradually is followed.
After then, we keep this south to south cooperation. This is the China and Thailand cooperation. This is Professor Gao and the director from the Chinese Academy of Sciences with the Director of ISTA in Thailand. We worked together on how to use this satellite information and the monitor and agriculture systems changed.
Also, we developed several training workshops. One is in the Mongolia. So we worked with ICSU, APN, and several other organisations. This is the University of National Mongolia. So, more than 20 treaties joined this.
So actually 15 years ago, I did the same thing in mongolia. But now they become a trainer. So we worked together. I’m very glad to be one the key persons high in the agency. So I’m very proud to have this programme. So this is my experience on why we do this and why we do this in the IGF.
I would like to call you to work together to work on this Open Knowledge Environment. Thank you very much.
(Applause)

>> GAO XINMIN: Thank you, Professor Liu. You already have seen Professor Liu make a lot of efforts to promote OKE in China. But there not only in China, it’s internationally. She won the CODATA prize winner. So we are very proud. Thank you very much for your presentation.
I want to invite the next speaker, Ana Neves. Her presentation will talk about the importance of the knowledge openness and access to knowledge. Please, Ana.
>> ANA NEVES: Thank you very much. I have to say that it was great to hear the messages from the Professor. These are messages from China, and I have to say that the very same messages are portrayed by Portugal. So from China to Portugal it’s the same ideas and the same message regarding the need to open the access to information. Nowadays, we are in 2010. In 2000 we launched what was called the Lisbon strategy. And what it is, it is something that we already were aware about it. But it was not written down, so it was that we were living in a knowledge based society. And since then, all THIS knowledge, this work, becomes so strong. But still, there are so many things to do.
And regarding Portugal, it was difficult to put this open access for free to end-users, because of course in between we had the publishers and we had the enterprise and the companies that have to have their money. So it was not an easy thing to do. But still, we are striving for that. And because, in fact, knowledge should be global. Human resources and capacity building are the main components to change a society. And, in fact, if we give the same opportunities regarding knowledge, we are doing a very good job for equal footing among everybody. So everybody, it will be an equal footing.
I must say that it is an honour to be here in this workshop and to have been invited to be here. Because this workshop means a lot for us. And to have this dimension in this workshop within the Internet Governance Forum, it is something that is really really important. And we have to — well, it’s important for funding agencies to pay more attention to these important questions. Because at the end of the day, for the time being, we must depend on the government and on these national agencies to help researchers, Professors, to help students, to help end-users to have free access to knowledge.
In fact, we have different models, but we convey the same message. You mentioned that I would present a different model, the Portuguese model, if I can say that. But it’s exactly to convey the same message and to achieve exactly the same goals.
So I have a very, very short presentation. So we have what we call in Portugal the science, the eScience tools. And eScience tools, they mean — they were developed to facilitate the deployment of needed resources for open knowledge research and education where they are not available and to provide tools for long distance and collaborative cooperation in bridging the digital divide.
So, let’s say that first we are following these five general practical rules for success in the knowledge based society. So, we have set as a goal the expansion of human capital and the capacity building.
We set as a goal the promotion of an Open Knowledge Environment.
We set as a goal to ensure free access to knowledge to the end-user.
And we set as a goal to foster partnerships and knowledge networks, leaving room for bottom up creativity.
And finally, we set as a goal the promotion of the internationalization of our scientific community. So this is my very last slide. And it is a very short part of our strategy. In fact, here we have Professor Pedro, who is over there, who is one of the people responsible for the eScience strategy in Portugal and in fact he managed the national research and education network. And so I will go one by one to try to make you to understand what we can call the model, the Portuguese model. I don’t know if I can call it the Portuguese model, but it’s what we are doing and our plan.
So we have the national research and integration network as the next generation network. Presently, we have the education system.
Then we have what we call the E-U. It’s a virtual campus wireless access integrating all public higher education Campi.
Then we have something very important called “B”-on. So it’s the knowledge library online that ensures universal access to 17,000 scientific journals, 18,200 eBooks, 12,400 proceedings, transaction titles.
Free access to all public higher education and scientific institutions through the “Big deal,” a national contract. And we have a protocol with the University of Cape Vert and it gives totally free access to public universities, polytechniques, research units and public laboratories. So through this “big deal” that was negotiated by the government with the main publishers, all these people, the researchers, students, Professors, they have free access both in Portugal and if they are not in Portugal. So this access can then be there even if they are not in Portugal.
Then we have what we call the RCAAP. The scientific open access repository of Portugal. And includes all of the thesis, reports, prints that are not protected by copyright. So all of the people use this RCAAP as an open access repository where anybody, anybody in the world, can have access to any thesis, any report that is over there. So it’s totally open to anyone through a single research engine for the whole country, making easy its access and use.
Then we have what we call ZAPPIENS. Open access repository of scientific and educational high definition videos. Just research on the Internet with ZAPPIENS. You can see what how we use this tool. It can be researched by anyone. Again, it’s a repository of data, of free data, that can be used for research purposes.
And finally, I would like to talk about tools for collaborative work at distance bridging of the digital divide. So we have high definition videoconferencing. We have VoIP for all scientific and education systems. It allows videoconferences. We allow content for professionals to keep up to date, content for general citizens.
And we are working with several countries in order to have this collaborative dimension and to expand all these tools and to optimize these tools in order to make it — to make them glaebl. Because, in fact, what we want with this strategy — and it only makes sense if the eScience strategy is global.
So that’s it. Thank you.
(Applause)

>> GAO XINMIN: Thank you very much, Ana Neves. She gave us a very impressive presentation concerning the eSciences strategy in Portugal.
I want to ask Ana whether this eScience strategy in Portugal is finished or complete?

>> ANA NEVES: No. No.

>> GAO XINMIN: What is it —

>> ANA NEVES: It’s an ongoing process.

>> GAO XINMIN: How long is the time? Five years or…

>> ANA NEVES: No. I can say that — we had a strategy for the year 2010. And from now on, we will have another one.

>> GAO XINMIN: Another one. Okay.

>> ANA NEVES: But maybe Professor Baden can say something about that. I think he can say something.

>> GAO XINMIN: Yes, maybe — one moment. One moment.
Just suggest that after the two presentations are really finished, we will open the floor for questions and comments for the two speakers, because they have presented very similar topics and contents. They provide some principles, laws, and also they presented their own experiences in their own nations. So it’s very similar content.
So I would like to now open the floor for your questions and comments. Please, raise your hand and state your name and your company, organisation. Okay?
The microphone? Just a moment.

>> ANA NEVES: And I suggest that Professor Baden say something —

>> GAO XINMIN: Yes. Maybe, first of all. Microphone, please.

>> Okay. Thank you very much. Indeed, the strategy in Portugal is an evolving process. From time to time we will reach our targets. We are aligned with the initiatives that are taking place in all European countries. As Ana mentioned, our government tried to put into the European arena the issues of open access that we believe are very, very important. And I suppose Ana already mentioned all the relevant points.
But I would like to emphasize that the Portuguese language is one of the most spoken languages, basically, because of Brazil. Brazil is a big country. So we are trying to coordinate the ZAPPIENS project where we aim to have content in the Portuguese language and now it’s a partnership with Brazil. So we are trying to use these tools as a deployment of knowledge, because we believe that knowledge can be critical for the evolution of our societies.
Thank you very much.

>> GAO XINMIN: Thank you. Maybe this gentleman?

>> AUDIENCE: Yes. Good morning everybody. My name is Vitto S. I work for the Department of Defense in Lithuania. I’m also formerly with the Department of Infomatics in Lithuania. I came to the workshop with the interesting title, “bridging the digital divide.” And what I have heard from the first two presenters who presented their cases very well, I hear — I seem to think that there are fences being built rather than addressing the digital divide.
For example, the term used in both presentations “End-user” and I wrote down who are the end-users? Students? Professors? Researchers? Getting data for research and development? And I’m thinking now what about the common people, people who go home from work in the evening and want to learn something, they don’t — maybe they are not a scientist, they are not a professor, but they just want to improve themselves or perhaps participate more in their community, in the democracy. So, if we’re spending millions of dollars in Portugal for a 10 gigabit line for the students and Professors, what about the regular people?
The next thing, how do we bridge the digital divide? First thing comes to mind, what do you need? Do you need a computer? Do you need Internet? No. You need lek tris tee. what is being electricity. We have rural areas here that have very poor electricity. That is an important part.
The second part is access and choice for your service provider. You need to deregulate your telecommunications sector, that you don’t have just one provider offering one pipe to a developing country. I’m thinking more of the needs of a developing country, which I don’t see addressed at all in this workshop called “Bridging the digital divide.” If we are just going to make access to Professors, students, and researchers that were mentioned in both presentations and both said we are saying the same things, so maybe there is a misunderstanding on my part, because I haven’t attended all the workshops in the meetings, maybe this is implied that the common people, but I hope it’s not a trickle down effect. Again you need an economic background to digital divide solutions: Electricity, access to your service provider, deregulate the telecommunications industry, and next is access to information, not just for a select few. Maybe we’re building a digital divide and we don’t realise it.
Thank you.

>> GAO XINMIN: Just a moment. I want to ask Ana to give a brief answer. Explain what are the points.

>> ANA NEVES: Thank you very much. So, well, I’m from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education. I cannot explain all the plans of Portugal for the digital divide from the agriculture person to the prime minister or the president of the Republic. But I must say that within our ministry, we are working with children through what is called the telecentres, and — but it was not — it would make no sense to put it in this workshop, because in fact the workshop was more focused on the knowledge and on open knowledge, meaning that any student of higher education of any public higher education institution can have free access to any document that — well, if it’s being educated to understand it. And so any student can have access.
I talked about researchers. I talked about Professors. Why? Because research is something that is being very, very important and it’s great because it’s really the basics for innovation. It’s really great because it’s the basics for economic growth. So, of course, we have to invest in everybody. So this ministry is investing in the people that it is our target people, that it starts in the students that are 18 years old. So from 18 years old, we are doing the best we can in order for everybody to be on equal footing.
So I cannot say what is going on in the Minister of Education, but I can say that it’s part of the Ministry of Education to do exactly the same for its targeted people.
On the other hand, I said one thing, I said that RCAAP, that is the repository of all of the theses, the theses of great people, of Ph.D.S, of Master’s, they are all there. And anybody can have access. You can have access. Anybody from the entire world can have free access to it.
So, if we are investing a lot on making people more educated, they want to have more information and they will know how to use this information. Otherwise, they cannot use this information. They don’t know how to use it. You see?
So that is why my focus was on these people from 18 years old and further. Because before that, it’s another ministry and I’m not talking about all the technological plans that we have to invest in human resources and capacity building. But, in fact, our main issue is to invest a lot on human resources and capacity building, because that is the basics, that is the main thing that will do something to bridge the digital divide. Without these basics, nothing can be done. Many cannot do that.
So I just wanted to make you understand that this bridges the digital divide, it’s to give equal access to everybody.
Again, I said that this ministry — the focus of the ministry is from 18 years old and further. So, before that, we are doing something to overcome.

>> AUDIENCE: The majority of the population of the world —
(Off microphone)

>> GAO XINMIN: Okay. We will stop here. Because the digital divide, they have different definitions, and the very — you can sense various things in a broad sense. They say that this is scientific, the higher education, it’s in this a narrow sense. In the broad sense, it’s in the scope as Ana mentioned.
So I will stop here.
I ask you, please?

>> AUDIENCE: Thanks for the opportunity. I have another workshop to run so I’ll be brief. I have one Question for Ana and two comments for Professor Liu.
I’m impressed by the presentations. It’s eye opening. A question for Ana, I’m impressed by your reference to an eLibrary initiative in Portugal. So at the University and educational institutions, researchers, Professors, students can have free access to more than 1 thousand journals and eBooks. You have a national level system to handle the copyright issue. I’m impressed by the collective licensing regime to handle the issue of copyright. It’s very challenging.
My Question here is that whether all these books or journals are noncopyrightable — they are not. Okay.
And whether these books or journals are all Portuguese copyright works? And if you are a member of WIPO, what if this is a journal that is edited and compiled in the United States, this is the US copyright and of course it’s protected in Portugi. This is a big issue for developing countries. We really want to access that.
And for Professor Liu, I’m so impressed by the open access movement in China. I’ve been working on the access to knowledge for many, many years. I’m so happy to see my country is really doing something that is so positive and supportive to access to knowledge.
I fully agree with you, we do need a very coherent and strong national strategy. What I can see, one of the important trends is trying to prioritize all of the innovations and scientific things at the same time that we encourage Professors and researchers to apply patents to obtain exclusive right to that. We believe that is primarily the way to stimulate innovation. And what I can see from your presentation is that we can actually do, from another perspective, not only to make it exclusive. We can make it open to stimulate more values to such innovation. So it’s really, really important.
Another perspective said international cooperation of course. Yes, there is a global campaign and movement on access to knowledge. Actually, it’s a global academic network, global academy on access to knowledge. We’re doing research primarily on legal issues, to overcome, for the purpose of access to knowledge, including open journal, open literature, open scientific data and open source of course. So, we are happy to have you join the network and it would be an honour.
Thank you very much.

>> GAO XINMIN: Okay. A brief answer, okay?

>> ANA NEVES: Because I think this Question was really important. Because — when you are — when you know the contract and what you are talking about, sometimes you don’t explain everything. So these contracts are made between the government and the publishers. Okay? So the government pays to the publishers. Okay?
So it’s all international magazines, books, journals, all, okay?
So it is very difficult negotiations, very costly, and so we tried, as Professor Baden mentioned several minutes ago that, in 2007, when Portugal had the presidency of the Council of The United Republic of the European Union for a cluster of Member States to better negotiate these contracts. It was not possible. Why? Because some publishers are from two important countries of the European Union who don’t want to put down the prices.
Still, the prices went down. So, it’s an ongoing process, but it is our contribution for the students, teachers, Professors, for everybody that wants to have access to these journals, books, et cetera.

>> GAO XINMIN: I suppose one Question more for a moment. And then we will continue with the next speaker’s presentation. Afterwards, you have another chance to continue discussion. Okay?
Maybe the lady.

>> CYNTHIA WADDELL: Thank you. I want to thank the panel for taking the time and sharing with us your background and what has been happening in China and Portugal.
I’m Cynthia Waddell with the Internet Centre for Disability Resources on the Internet. Our mission has been to address the digital divide with respect to persons with disabilities. And my work with the Clinton, Bush, Obama administration and now with countries who signed the UN Convention on rights of persons with disability has been to address the infrastructure issue. We won’t talk about rural work, there are strategies for having to deal with the rural issues and electricity.
But my Question to Ana and Dr. Liu is this: Interoperability, sustainability, and capacity building are very important principles. And one of the issues that we’re finding is the researchers, students and faculty and the aging of the population, these people who are also persons with disabilities, in order to have open access and everyone to have access and use of the libraries, the research information and the data centres, there needs to be interoperability with assistive computer technology. So that the researchers who are blind, faculty, students who have low vision can use the screen readers when they access this data and information and conduct the research. The same as persons with hearing disabilities, such as myself, who need this captioning that we’re having right now for the remote hub, or need captioning for the teleconferences, or long distance learning events, because of the audio that needs to be accessible.
So I’m wondering — that was my background to ask you: What steps are you taking to address interoperability? I know that Portugal was one of the first countries in the EU who adopted accessible Web design standards, as I was privileged to be on part of that effort. And commend you for that leadership. And I know China has also been leading in this way.
But with respect to this technical area, what are you doing to ensure that your researchers with disabilities, your students and your Professors can also participate in the Open Knowledge Environment?

>> GAO XINMIN: Yes, Dr. Liu?

>> LIU CHUANG: So I think this technology is a very very important issue, also. For the developed countries, I think the first thing is that we need to adjust the policy strategy. And then the contents, knowledge, input, with technology.
So, I think updating the technology is extremely critical. That is together with capacity building, teaching people how to use the new technology. So that is — we put this as one of the principles. Thank you.

>> GAO XINMIN: Okay. Maybe we will stop at the moment for discussion or comments. We will continue our presentations. I would like to invite the next speaker, Professor Tao Xiaofeng. Maybe, Professor Tao, you present for ten minutes. I want to share more time for the audience.

>> TAO XIAOFENG: Okay I’m a member of the con (Off member)
(Echoes from the Internet)
Is this okay? Okay.
Sorry.
Most of the people use 2G and 3G. Maybe five or seven years later we are using 4G. In ITU, the International Mobile Televisions, IMT for short, we use 4G from 100 megabits per second to 1 thousand. If we download, it’s just several seconds. For 4G, we can supply information any time anywhere. This takes low power and very low radiation.
Nowadays, as I said, most people use 2G and 3G, the third and second generation. And 2 million more mobile subscribers every day. And 500 million 3G mobile subscribers.
And in China, it’s about 750 million mobile subscribers in China. And totally, 5 billion mobile subscribers all over the world. Ten years ago, there were just 720 million mobile subscribers all over the world.
So many manufacturers give their contributions. Here I show you three, three figures for 3G, the main contributors. You can see for WCDMA, Ericsson. You can see this for COCOM, Ericsson and for Nokia. And you can see this here. Siemens. This company, it’s from China. Maybe this is the only company from a different country in 3G. And the 3G contributors bring prosperity, mobile communications, of course.
However, maybe there are some possible problems. Here are a few problems. Technology is held by a few companies, monopoly, and a lack in developing countries. Maybe you want to do something about the 3G or 2G or 4G, you have to pay a high license. And high expenditure for later participation. And, of course, if you want to test or something, new technologies, use the current platform. The current platform requires DSP/ASKIC. This is a technology term. It’s very difficult to design the current platform for the second or third generations. And it was a long time for cost and high cost for developing. And the condition of the platform, as I said, it’s very expensive. For the base station we use a mobile phone. The base station may be several hundred thousand US dollars. And for the test requirement, more than 10 thousand dollars.
So, maybe we use a new platform, called SORA platform. It’s a radio platform. It’s a novel software radio platform with fully programmability. I designed this one about four years ago, in support with our government. And this is a software radio platform. I designed this last year. This is a comparison. You can see the cost, update, developing, openness and you can see this is more — this is a larger, it’s the size, maybe it’s the same as the original PC.
This is very expensive and this is rather cheap. And updating this is difficult and this is easy. And for openness, each company has their own patent. And for SORA, this should have openness.
And here I show you two practices. Maybe this is not best practice, but this is just my practice.
Practice one, this is a SORA system. This is an important step. It’s to popularize the SORA system. MSRA and Microsoft research Asia jointly held a successful promotional campaign. So there were students in China in July, this July, and 20 students were selected from different universities. Some from the west — west — Southwest China. Some maybe from South China. Some from the middle of China.
Other features — the teachers were from four countries. Thank you. East, west, it was free of charge to students, also, all students were offered three meals every day. The summer school has two stages. Stage one, study on communication procedures. Stage two, do some research based on stage one. This research was for the first generation model communication. And the summer school began on August 1 and ended on the 30th of August. This is some performance. And at the end of the summer school, all students got a certificate. The free training plan maybe would be held every year for students not only from China, but also from all over the world.
And the second practice we also have is with the US, UK, China science bridges, the UK China science bridge and the research and development on 4G. This will introduce this kind of platform as the common research and developing platform.
The project budget for the research platform, I don’t think it is sufficient if constructing a new platform with traditional solutions. For example, the traditional solutions. So the SORA platform has advantages of cost, and also convenience. It’s also very convenient for students. So it is selected as the common research and developing platform.
And this project including the UK, China science bridges, there are 6 UK academic partners and you can see the partners there.
Totally, there were 10 UK universities and 7 Chinese universities and also some partners for industry, from UK side, from Chinese side. We used the same platform together.
And this is the final slide. What is needed to be further addressed in the Open Knowledge Environment for wireless mobile communications? I think maybe from this respect, the first one is the popularization. We need more open educational and training, platform methods and tools for creating, sharing, and updating technology. And also we should do some technology research on technology. For example, we should do some open interfaces among different modules. Open modules for scientific innovation, funding and publication, research for novel theories, 3G or 4G. And also, this kind of platform can support Cloud computing. This is a good platform for Cloud computing. And last, maybe we should also pay some attention to this. For instance, the reward to some open knowledge contributors, some open lessons and security and general platforms.
So thank you very much. (Applause)

>> GAO XINMIN: Thank you, Professor Tao. I would like to invite Mr. William Drake to present on the issues. Please.

>> WILLIAM DRAKE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning everybody. I’m happy to be here, even though I’m not a fan of 9 a.m. panels.
This is my fifth year in a row of being on a panel organised by CAST, which has been a very interesting experience. I’m always happy to talk with Chinese colleagues on matters of openness and information flow and related topics. I think this is all very important and it’s precisely the thing that the IGF is for.
Last year’s panel we talked about Open Knowledge Environments in a little bit more lower level operational way. And I spoke in particular about questions of mass collaboration and Wiki knowledge and some ways of trying to operationalize that.
This time I understood the topic to be about principles that would be guiding for both the sustaining of an Open Knowledge Environment or building one and sustaining it, and as well as the global digital divide tackling that. These two are somewhat different spheres, and the kinds of policies and programmes that you might pursue with regard to one are not necessarily always going to be directly targeted to the other. So it leads to a certain amount of dispersion in terms of focus, but that is fine. In the end, everything is interrelated.
I guess I’m going to then try to talk a bit about some principles that I think are important to these particular environments and questions. Some of which pertain to the governance of the Internet per se, some of which pertain to governance on the Internet, you might say. Governance within particular social formations or groupings that exist in the network environment. And then some are just kind of broader, cross-cutting principles.
And here I have to say I strongly agree with the Lithuanian colleague before who was talking about, you know, we should not just think about this in relation to high level scientists and University people and so on. We have to think about it and an Open Knowledge Environment in a broader sense and one that engages citizens. Increasingly, the boundary lines between organised education and other parts of social life are becoming more blurry in some respects, and should be.
So let me just start by offering a few guiding principles with regard to infrastructure. And I have to say I apologize at the outset, none of these are new or interesting. They are the ones — you can spend a lot of time thinking about principles. Ten years ago, I worked for the World Economic Forum on their global digital divide initiative and wrote a report that went to the heads of state at the Okinawa summit of the G on how to bridge the digital divide, and all of the principles that I wrote then were all very generic and they’re still the same things we talk about today. So when it comes to principles, it’s not obvious how much evolution you can really get. I could just repeat the things from then and it would probably work.
But these are just a few points that I’d like to make that I think are particularly apt here. Clearly, one cardinal principle with respect to the infrastructure that has to be preserved is security and trust. And this is obviously an essential bedrock. You can’t have an Open Knowledge Environment when people are not sure, A, that the infrastructure is going to be stable, reliable, and they are not going to be infected with malware and they will not have this — they will not download something that is going to track them around the Internet, et cetera, or that the infrastructure will crash et cetera. So stability of the Internet and stability of systems attached to it is an open bedrock for an Open Knowledge Environment.
One thing I have to say is that when we ensure and lock things down and make them more stable, that we have to be aware of the risks of successive securitization. There is a tendency in many countries, including the United States, to view everything through a security prism, which foregrounds controlling access and uses and so on, and backgrounds other kinds of considerations, openness, flexibility, dynamism, et cetera. And this can lead to impediments being established, which may work against an Open Knowledge Environment. So I emphasize that point.
Secondly, I think it’s important, to the extent that one can, to preserve the universality of the Internet. One has to be realistic about this. You know, we talk a lot in ICANN these days in the context of discussions of morality and public order and issues of universal resolvability and everything has to be reachable everywhere, and so on. But the reality is more complex. The Internet is becoming more fragmented, also neomedieval in its organisation. But as a goal to aspire towards, we want to try to preserve universality, avoiding all gardens of various sorts, whether they are established by corporations or other organisations or exist at the level of nation states.
Third, Internet operability of the infrastructure. There is the increasing risk of closed proprietary platforms, technical standards and so on, leading to barriers that would limit the ability of people to access all kinds of knowledge and information they might need to leverage the unique benefits of the Internet.
A fourth one I would emphasize, and it’s been discussed elsewhere in this forum, is the notion of network neutrality and the end-to-end principle. This is a broader concept. It’s not specific to Open Knowledge Environments. But nevertheless, if an environment in which increasingly network operators are choosing to discriminate against particular types of applications, uses, and so on, you are taking the risk that certain forms of knowledge, certain forms of information, resources that may be essential to supporting innovation, dynamism and growth and so on will be more expensive, more limited to work with. So network neutrality is really going forward going to be one of the important questions with regard to Internet governance. To date it’s been largely an issue that has arisen at the national level.
You know in the US there has been a robust battle and debate about what network neutrality is and how to promote it. And it’s happening in other parts of Europe and other countries. We have not tried to take it on yet as a global norm, as a global kind of transnational issue, yet the issues do reach across national frontiers. So we will have to think down the line exactly how we deal with the questions of network neutrality and discrimination.
Turning from the infrastructure itself to the use of the infrastructure for your information, communication and content, I would raise a few other principles. And again, most of these are fairly obvious. One, of course, the cardinal principle from my standpoint would be the protection of freedom of expression and privacy protection are essential to any kind of Open Knowledge Environment. Of course, freedom of expression is guaranteed in international law. But it doesn’t necessarily mean so much. Increasingly in the contemporary environment we are seeing more and more forms of barriers to the open flow of expression and chilling effects that arise from various forms of surveillance, et cetera. So without a sense of personal security, without a sense that one can engage in the activities one wants to, how does one then really participate effectively or construct an Open Knowledge Environment? This is very difficult.
Another principle that has to be preserved is the user centricity of the Internet. It has to be fundamentally about empowering people. Andrew McLaughlin in the opening comments used a phrase I liked very much: Innovation without permission. I thought that was very nice. If there is anything that has led to the development and growth of the Internet, it’s been the ability of people to engage in innovation without permission. If one looks at the history of global communications, when we had national PTTs and national monopolies controlling precisely what you could attach to a network and how you could use it and what rate you could send data and how you could connect circuits and all sorts of things, there was such a corpus of kind of top down regulation that restricted the ability of people to engage in innovation, that it really stifled and misdirected the rate and direction of technological change.
I mean, if one looks at the ways in which, for example, existing technologies and investments in, for example, telegraph impeded the development of of the international telephone and so on, you get in those kinds of environments, people essentially were trying to protect their sunk investments at the expense of innovation. And what we have had in the Internet is a different environment. One is much more open and allows people to do things from the bottom up. That has to be preserved. It’s important for developing country, I would argue, if we’re going to talk about bridging the digital divide, you can’t bridge the digital divide if people are limited in what they can do with the net and resources.
Unfortunately, Hung Ju left, but she raised a point that I emphasize as well. Access to knowledge. It’s a general kind of principle. And it’s, as she noted, it’s a large scale transnational social movement around this. And it’s very, I think, important. Because we are constantly dealing with the reality that, you know, in the effort to protect intellectual property, sometimes the kinds of measures that are put in place may prove a bit restrictive in terms of people’s ability to utilize, deploy, remix samples, add on to and alter forms of information. And this can limit, in particular, the ability to engage in mass collaboration and the kind of decentralized production and sharing of knowledge that I think is essential to an Open Knowledge Environment.
So, as we think about how to do this, preserving access to knowledge and avoiding a situation in which we have got a lot of kind of top down barriers being imposed, while of course it’s a matter of balance, while of course protecting intellectual property, but not necessarily. You want to protect the property rights of the creator, I argue, and I know there are people in the room who disagree with me, more than sort of large intermediary organisations that might position themselves to leverage those resources.
Open network research tools and programmes are increasingly important. Collaborative efforts and developing open source tools, et cetera, and establishing rules for how these things are managed are really key, ensuring rapid disclosure of research results and compiling things in open, accessible digital archives, these are the kinds of programmes and initiatives that have to be supported.
More generally, openness and higher education, I think, is very important. It’s been very interesting for somebody coming out of an academic background to see the transformations that happened in recent years. If you look at things like what MIT has done with its open courseware initiative or what other institutions are doing. Or even now you can like go on iTunes and go to the iTunes University, which is a funny idea, if you think about it, and download pod casts of people lecturing, et cetera, this is an extraordinary thing in terms of Democratizing access to higher education and knowledge. It’s a fantastic thing. But we need to do more to preserve and expand openness of access to higher education and its outputs. Part of the problems here are internal to higher education. It drives me crazy, being an academic, that the professional norms that exist within higher education, the way people get rewarded for work, you know, that all the incentives are to sort of treat your informational outputs as proprietary things. They are positional goods, rather than sharing and making them open, et cetera. You try to protect them, lock them down, et cetera. And this is also supported and furthered by the journals that we have. My God, you can’t — I — I’m organising a course right now that I start teaching next week in Zurich, and I tried to find materials to assign the students. Even my own articles, I find out that the journal that I published in costs $500 a year to subscribe. And if I would like to assign a copy of my Article to the students, they have to pay $3 each. Now, $3 each doesn’t seem like a lot.
But times all the things that will be assigned, it starts to add up. So we have to do more in the way of promoting more open journal, open ways of sharing information, et cetera.
With regard to higher education, I’m a big supporter of the open movement with researchers and students. Efforts to try to limit how many foreign students come into the country and control what they do are problematic. We need to expand access to education on a global basis, on a transnational basis.
Cultural linguistic diversity also has to be supported not by regulation, not by trying to limit or control some information providers and their ability to send things out, but rather by supporting from the bottom up the ability of people within developing countries to produce local products, local information forms within their languages, cultures and so on.
Turning to a couple cost cutting principles, and they are all obvious, multi-stakeholder peer based design planning is essential to an Open Knowledge Environment. You can’t have an open knowledge environment that is designed by one set of social actors with the exclusion of other social actors. There has to be a cooperative relationship.
Development has to be viewed as a cross-cutting imperative, applicable to both infrastructure and content. We had a main session on Internet governance for development in which we tried to, at least for the first time, broach the idea within IGF of what does it mean to view Internet governance through a developmental lens and to prioritize development and to try to think about how do you add that into the mix as a sort of imperative when assessing and choosing policy initiatives and programmes and designing procedures? And I think that this has to be furthered substantially and that includes capacity building.
Finally, we need to maintain multilayered and highly differentiated patterns of international cooperation. We have to recognize that all the different types of international institutions and processes that we designed play an important role, and that mix has to be somewhat stable. In her introductory comments, Professor Liu Chuang raised the point about an integrated and coherent policy system. That sounds great. I think everybody likes the idea of coherence. But we have to recognize that increasingly in the contemporary environment, if coherence means harmonization, it’s going to be hard to achieve. At the global level, we find that there are just too diverse set of interests involved and too many dynamics to sort of lock in kind of fixed global harmonized approaches. And we have to recognize and live with a more differentiated and distributed architecture of governance mechanisms, and figure out how to interface those effectively and live with the differences.
Variable geometry I think is the future, if not the present.
I’ll stop there. Thank you.
(Applause)

>> GAO XINMIN: Thank you, Dr. William Drake. I want to ask the last speaker, Professor wolfgang.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Thank you very much. And as the last speaker, you face always difficulties of the time is running out. But at this time, it was easy for me, because I can subscribe 98 percent of what Bill outlined. We are working together for a couple years, and it’s not surprising that we have harmonized to a high degree our approaches.
Like Bill, I’m involved in the project since the very early meeting in the year 2006, in essence. And it’s interesting to see how the original initiative has evolved over the years. And I think this is also a good story, which tells you about the usefulness and the effect of the Internet Governance Forum, which has introduced not only the multi-stakeholder dialog, but it’s also a source of inspiration. It has the power of innovation and helps us to learn from each other.
And as Bill said in the beginning, you know, I remember in essence we had the — one project on the table called the World Internet Norm, version 1. And then we came back in Rio de Janeiro with the second version, World Internet Norm version 2. The draft from our Chinese colleagues were made at home and driven by a lot of good intentions, introducing broad principles like harmony and access and diversity and openness and security.
I remember Madam Hu at this time, Chairman of the ISO in China, underlined the importance of the principle of harmony, which is important for the future of the Internet. And the discussions, if I remember correctly, what happened in essence in Rio de Janeiro, that we have to bring ideas from all parts of the world together and we have to have exchange of collaboration across the national borders if we talk about something like the World Internet Norm.
Certainly each country is different. Each country has a different history, culture, difference experiences, different specifics with regard to the national Internet. But on the other hand, we know the Internet is borderless and we share the resources and we share all the responsibilities. And what we have to discussed in our circles is that today, even if the principle of sovereignty will not go away with regard to states, well the execution of sovereignty has changed and it has to take into consideration a lot of additional elements, so that we discuss, for instance, at the Council of Europe now, the concept of cooperative sovereignty. Where the states and governments are still sovereign, but they have to share to a certain degree their practices with other governments and have to intensify the level of collaboration.
And all these ideas and principles, discussions around principles, which were stimulated to a high degree, also, by the Chinese colleagues here, has a certain success. If I look around here, I see Professor Benedict from the University of Grads, who is co-chairing the Dynamic Coalition on Rights and Principles on the Internet. And so they presented here a very interesting document about human rights and principles for the Internet.
I see someone here from the Brazilian government. The Brazilian Internet community took this as a stimulus, also, and drafted a very interesting, stimulating document with ten principles, you know, which has been elaborated on a multi-stakeholder basis and which is a wonderful source of inspiration and a guideline for what should guide us. And not only the Brazilian Internet community, because these principles are really universal in the understanding of something like a world norm, that we should not use this terminology, but because it’s misleading, but more or less it is.
And the Council of Europe, I’m Chairing a working group and we are working on multi-stakeholder principles. And in the meeting we had yesterday with the Council of Europe, we said we have to look around and to make use of, for instance, the principles and the dynamic coalition. The Brazilians and others, we should come up with more or less a global consensus. And I think it’s the only way that we can move forward, that we take the initiatives from various countries, with each of the countries has a special, specific cultural background and specific interests, specific policy, and try to find our common understanding.
Thirdly, there will be arenas where we have a different understanding. That’s very natural. I think it starts within our private life, you know. It’s sometimes very difficult if two people who are in love together and have married, that they have always a common understanding. On some issues, you know, they disagree. And so far we should not be afraid if we disagree on certain things, as long as we are committed to common goals, common visions, which is a free, open Internet which serves everybody and which is — is as inclusive as possible. We can further bridge the digital divide to bring more people to the Internet.
I think this first part of my comment — and so far I still remember the good old times when we were sitting in a room and you had a huge poster. It was the first big Chinese appearance on the Internet Governance Forum. And so — and you should be proud that you have been in as a player there from the very early days.
The second point is it’s more than just knowledge, as Bill outlined. We are together in many educational initiatives. And I think this is really a challenge for, let’s say, the academics, like people working in the universities, academic institutions, to, you know, help the next generation to have this understanding. It means training research, publication, writing books, articles. I think it’s important.
What we discovered already years ago, when Bill and I were in the working group on Internet governance, is that Internet governance is not an academic subject so far. It’s difficult to find books or articles which gives newcomers an opportunity to study this. And universities don’t offer courses on Internet governance. That means if you want to say I want to study Internet governance, where can I do it, you have difficulties to find a place where you can do it.
So, if you go to an ICANN meeting, to an IGF meeting, to meetings of other Internet communities, sometimes you need three or four or five meetings to understand what is going on there. It’s cryptic if they use all the acronyms, and then the question is where can I get the knowledge before I go to an ICANN meeting? Nowhere. So far this is the responsibility of the people who are doing this job for a couple of years. Meanwhile, they are deeply involved, you know, to help the leaders of tomorrow to get this knowledge. And so far, access to knowledge, against this very specific new developments around Internet governance, it’s a very, very important thing.
Some members from the former UN working group of Internet governance would have taken this as a challenge. And we have launched an academic network called GIGANET.
It’s a network of around 200, 300 researchers. We had the fifth symposium here in Vilnius. It was around 60 participants and some people participated remotely. But it’s an academic community of researchers. And it’s growing. And I can only invite researchers from around the globe, in particular, from China, to join this GIGANET and to help and build a body of knowledge around what is called Internet governance. Because you are here, he has just finished his Ph.D. And written a book about it, and so it would be good if experts from all countries summarize experiences, wrote a book, and just put it under creative comments, so that students have access to the book for free and don’t have to pay the high subscription fee, you know, or the high prices for the books published under the publications here, which is edited by Bill at MIT.
This is one way.
The other way is really training. We have initiated a, as part of this GIGANET, the concept which is called the summer school on Internet governance. And we started with the European version in the year 2007. And it was a success. And then we discovered there are two summers on the globe. And — June, July, August in the north, and February, March in the south. So we had south summer school. The first one was in Buenas Aires, then in Sao Palo and the third will be in Mexico. And we had summer school in the Arab world. And this is based on a 40-hour course, very compressed, master level, which enables people to understand, you know, what is going on in the special circles. So we have three models. One is more theory, one is policy and the third one is technology. So students, fellows from the summer school, get knowledge about CCIT manager, IP management and Technology section. They get knowledge about, you know, interests of the and policies of the various stakeholders, governmental perspective, business, Civil Society Information perspective, technical community perspective, and others. And they have the history of the Internet governance, policy, technology, the human rights dimension. And some people in the room have been members of the faculty, like Wolfgang and Bill and others. So it means — and I just want to let you know that this is a great opportunity now to further enhance this concept of the summer school.
We are very proud that now our Chinese member of the faculty, Professor Hong Sui from the Beijing University, has taken this to the AP region and it will be the first Asia summer school on Internet governance in the end of June, next year, in Beijing.
So I think this is really important. And the beauty of the system is the models, which is just described, is that while the series is global, the theory model, the policy and technology model are determined very often by local specifics. So it means that while the lecture on IP address management will be done by RIPNCC in Europe, it can be done by ethnic in Asia, or by AFRNET. And others can be done by others. Or it can be done by people who manage other groups in Korea. So the fellows get access to the local issues and challenges, and at the same time get knowledge on the global side. And so far this concept is really, meanwhile, a very nice success. And for the last European summer school, we had 120 applications from 60 countries for the 30 seats we have.
And if you go to the Web site, you’ll find all information there. And all this is a bottom up initiative. There was no governmental programme or no established institution behind this. It was just people who are active in this field and were working for some support. And I’m also very thankful that some of the players here, registrars, ISP, help to build this. Because without money you cannot do this. And I’m thankful that we were able to collect enough money that we could, meanwhile, train more than 200 students, which really will become the Internet governance leaders of tomorrow.
The last ICANN meeting in Brussels, I was sitting in various conversations and I was impressed. In the Government Advisory Committee, there were 8 members in the GAC.
Four former fellows and former faculty members of the summer school. If you go to the summer school, then probably this is a springboard which brings you into various positions. And also you have leadership in the GNSO council. I’ve seen that you have two or three fellows from our summer school. So the concept works. But you have to be active. You have to not wait that somebody comes and tells you that you have to do this. Here is a challenge. You have to be active, you have to take the lead and you have to stimulate. Even if you cannot bring this to an end, like your World Internet Norm, it’s out of your hand, it’s in different things. But this was a great initiation.
I hope that we will continue this debate one year from now. Thank you very much.
(Applause)

>> GAO XINMIN: Thank you. It’s a lot of contributions. The problem is time is very limited. But I saw already a lot of audience who wants to ask questions and have comments. Please. You first.

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I’m Evert from the government of Brazil.

>> GAO XINMIN: A motion, maybe I ask you, as brief as possible, to make your question. And then I ask all the questions together, then I ask the panelists to answer.

>> AUDIENCE: Okay. Actually, what I have is a comment, because I would like to add — I would like to add my voice to our Portuguese colleagues on the importance of promoting access to knowledge, in particular scientific knowledge, to the promotion of development. And in Brazil, we have a similar initiative as in Portugal with an eLibrary that is held by the federal agency that coordinates the post graduate courses. And the intention is to make available a wide variety of published material to students and researchers, along the lines that were presented by our Portuguese colleague. And we also face the same question of costs, because there are millions and millions of dollars that have to be paid every year for the publishing houses, publishing editors. And it is on the perspective of developing a clear barrier to the advancement of knowledge in our societies.
So this is an important aspect that needs to be taken up seriously. So I’m very glad that you had the opportunity to bring up this issue here at the workshop, together with the Chinese experience which I believe adds also along the same lines that what we are doing.
I would just end finally by saying that with reference to the expression that Bill Drake mentioned about innovation without restriction, I believe that is a really interesting sum up of all the progress that we need to do and to promote in what is referred to as Internet governance. But bringing that to the development length, I believe that the restriction that we do not want to have is precisely that kind of restriction posed by extremely — by let’s say by these rules of copyrights that are not favoring the distribution of scientific knowledge produced by authors throughout the world.
The interest of researchers and academic authors is to spread their word, because they want to contribute to our global knowledge, and not exactly to earn money from it. That’s the basic interest. And that should be taken into account when we use the environment of the Internet.
By the way, just a remark, I haven’t published my book yet, my thesis has been recommended for publishing and I intend to do so in the near future. And I’ll make sure with that when I do so, I’ll have an eVersion published under a license that is sort of creative comments or something, to make it more freely available.

>> GAO XINMIN: Okay. Thank you. Yes.

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. I’m Peter Major, advisor to the Hungarian mission to the UN in Geneva. And also I’m a father of an old student of the summer school that the Professor Wolfgang Kleinwachter was talking about. And I have to tell you that I learned a lot from my daughter after the course.
Getting back to the presentation of Ana, it occurred to me that there is a draft treaty of the WIPO on the exceptions of limitations for disabled and educational research institutions, which is still in draft. But eventually probably with the greater participation of the European Union, we could do something.
And it brings up a second question, whether either, with regard to strategy number two, that is to enlarge your efforts, which are magnificent, which are really very impressive, to all the Europe. I know that you have cooperation with Brazil, because of the language. But have you thought of that, that eventually this should be, as you have already indicated, made on a European level? Thank you.

>> GAO XINMIN: Okay.

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you very much. I first of all want to thank you all. Amazing presentations. I enjoyed them very much.
Okay. Is that better?
Okay. I’m Mohammad Brian from Somalia. First of all, thank you very much. Bill and others, I enjoyed your presentations very much. But here I have questions that I want to raise to all of you. I’ll use the Portuguese example and the Brazil link as the basis. As we move forward, and I’m very happy with some of the developments happening on the Internet, I feel also we are going to — sometimes I’m not sure it’s the right way to go. First of all, let me just mention one, the IDN. If we have the Chinese people use their own language on the Internet, it’s a very good outcome, I would feel excluded. I have to learn Chinese to see what the Chinese were saying. If I use your eLearning books, then I have to learn Portuguese unless I live in Brazil.
Are there other ways we can solve this problem? While we want to allow access to the Internet for everyone, should we focus also — how do we tackle the language issues so everyone can access what everyone else is writing?
The access to technology, it’s not necessarily forward in development. I’ll give you just one example. WhereI come from, we have almost the number one internal communication access, the cheapest telecommunication is in Somalia. But it’s also number one in the (Off microphone.) States. This is an extension to the question asked before. Instead of looking at development of one state or one nation, perhaps you should be moving beyond that and saying okay, can we look at the global as well and say look, how do we make access to everyone? How do we make language perhaps available to all?
And lastly, I want to comment on MIT. I learned more from MIT than probably I did when I was at Uni. Thank you very much.

>> AUDIENCE: I’m Emilia, president of Lithuanian Research Library Consortium. I have an advice to all of the scientists who are publishing in proprietary journals: Don’t sign licenses which don’t allow you to have access to your own works.
And publish your works more in open access journals. Or if you do publish your works in proprietary journals, download those works in institutional repositories. In this way they will be accessible without any fees to everybody in the world.
The second comment is also to Ana. I have noticed that you are bargaining those big deals. The ministry is bargaining them. And we have a little bit different approach in Lithuania. We have a consortium, and we are getting some funds from different ministries, which allows us to negotiate big deals on the countrywide level. And this is, in this way, public libraries can have access to some information. Of course, Elsivier will never agree to such a deal, but some publishes do agree to have those nationwide deals and in this way public libraries can have access. And then all the users who have a public library card can access such information.
Thank you.

>> GAO XINMIN: Thank you. Yes.

>> AUDIENCE: Hello. My name is Alarandro. I’m from the University of Mexico, and the Chair of the Internet Society of Mexico.
This session has been most fascinating in many ways. I’ll not go through all of them. But the main thing is that we can see many layers of approaches which are similar which have been evolved over decades coming together. Academic collaboration reading each other’s papers. Opening knowledge to each other is a position of academia since the middle ages.
And this culture was transferred to the Internet and it has been explosively enhanced in openness and collaboration. The phrase “innovation without permission,” which William Drake called it, is a frequent term in the Internet society, because that is what we see. That’s the way the Internet was built and you have to be very careful in preserving it. When Wolfgang says he doesn’t see a good academic book, if he were a reader he would say “I confess.” You can’t decree the lack of books on the Internet governance if none of them are good for teaching. Then your work is cut out for you. You owe everybody something!
To come to concrete points, one comment and one question.
The comment is what we see here, also, is again, Bill, an example of how many years separate the knowledge of one issue in a specific Internet governance related community, like the academic community, the access to that community, and so forth, and the discussion, even in a workshop not in a main session in the IGF. You are seeing here things that are ten years old outside the IGF. And it’s only today that some people in the IGF are brought together to discuss them.
It will take two to ten years for these discussions from here, for each of us to go back home and see them working. I was involved in the ICCO and CODATA review five years ago. I’m impressed to see that going on. But when XML and open access and the next step from what you are doing, which is going to open that, really, spreads out the end of the discussion that is in a few countries. It will be many years. So that shows the educational value of the IGF and the way that we can use the IGF to go to other spaces with our learning.
And my question to Professor Tao will be: I didn’t quite understand the relationship between open knowledge and your proposal. And I think the failure in making the connection is that you sort of didn’t complete your description based on a layer model. So you are talking 4G. And that’s — from an Internet point of view, that is just transport. So what is the novel part beyond building the technology and having a workshop on the technology itself? I may have missed it.

>> GAO XINMIN: Okay. I want to ask the remote moderator, are there some questions from —

>> PRIYANTHI. It’s not a question from the remote participants. It’s a comment from myself. Continuing with what one of the speakers mentioned on teaching on the IG, I have to said that I’ve been a tutor for the DiploFoundation for the past four years. I’m happy to say that I have taught more than 60 students from the Asian region as of now. Yes. Thank you.

>> GAO XINMIN: Please.

>> AUDIENCE: Very short point. As Wolfgang claimed, I was involved in drafting this chart on rights and principles on the Internet. We had a discussion there also about the digital divide, and a good part of the communication was of the opinion we should rather talk about this in terms of digital inclusion, in order to emphasize a rights based approach. There is an emerging wide obsession to the Internet and maybe digital inclusion covers it better and perhaps more profoundly. Because it’s not a matter only between countries, inside countries, it’s also the issue of marginalized groups who have particular needs of accessing the Internet and so on which can also be classed in this way.
And some of points made here with regards to scientific, access to scientific work, we also put under the rights to education. Because if you take the right to education in the context of the information society, then this has a number of repercussions of how to provide education in our time.
Thank you very much.

>> GAO XINMIN: Okay. I suggest that our panelists answer the questions. Maybe we will start to ask Ana, because — because there are several questions for you.

>> ANA NEVES: Thank you. Well, I think I’m going to focus on the question raised by the Lithuanian colleague.
But first, I would like to say that all these comments were very, very useful and very interesting, well, for me at least as a panelist.
Because it shows the depth and what was said here was important. And people understood the message.
And another thing, before I would like to reply to the colleagues, is that education and training are really the basics of course. And without education and training, what is the knowledge based society?
Regarding the big deals, in fact, what you said is something that we had before. So, we had deals between several institutions and what we saw was often because of the size of the institutions, they could not negotiate so well as we could. And so we changed and switched to the model that is the ministry itself, the government, that negotiates with the publisher. At the end of the day, we could save much more money. So, that’s why, because we had this fragmented negotiation before, and we thought that it was not a good idea and then we changed to this model.
And then after this model, we tried to do it at entry level. So, because — well, it’s really a safe model. It’s really a safe question.
The more major you are, the better you can negotiate. So that’s where we are.

>> GAO XINMIN: Mr. Wolfgang?

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: I just want to echo what the lady said with regard to the copyright and the recommendation to researchers to be aware when they write books and articles that they make it accessible to everybody.
If it’s not possible in the contract you have to sign with the publisher, then you have other ways to bypass this as an author and publish parts of your ideas as it becomes part of the common knowledge. It’s the individual responsibility of the researcher to understand that his knowledge is useful and necessary to others. It goes both ways. Nobody can write a book just out of his own ideas. So if you go to the annex, then you see the literature which is used, and normally the author used this literature for free. So it means that he should give away also his idea for free, also, to others.

>> GAO XINMIN: William?
>> WILLIAM DRAKE: With regard to books, I would say that my books are freely available. They have all been stolen. And they are free for downloading by peer-to-peer. So there you go. You don’t have to pay me anything.
No, I don’t really have much to say, other than to support the basic thrust of what people were saying. One comment that I think is interesting was about Somalia. And I heard before that Somalia has a blossoming Internet and telecom infrastructure. So perhaps the solution for having a dynamic innovative telecommunications environment is to be a failed state and we should pursue that as a new strategy.
(Chuckles)

>> GAO XINMIN: I want to ask you a question raised by Somalia colleagues about the language problems.

>> LIU CHUANG: The language is always a problem. It’s not only there, but for the Chinese also. How we dealt with this, the one thing we tried to do is learn English. And then we can learn some. And we also, the Chinese, and then the engineers, they developed the tools to translate it into different languages.
It’s not perfect, sometimes it works, but we wanted to gradually improve that, to improve the tools to automatically translate it. And the master IGF, there was a presentation for disabled people for how to read the different languages. So, that’s another story.
But I think this is — we give this task to technology people. So, for us, we try harder to learn different languages, even small group languages.

>> GAO XINMIN: Do you have any words?

>> TAO XIAOFENG: For my point of view, for 4G, a lot of times manufacturers don’t want to share their technologies. So this is the main concern. I want to make some open 4G research areas. Okay. Thank you so much.

>> GAO XINMIN: Okay. The time has run out. So we have to end our workshop. So, I would like to thank all the panelists for their contributions. I think our audience here and the remote participants were — I think gave a very good presentation and gave very useful information. They gave some practical case and experiences from different nations. It’s very useful for us.
And also, I hope we will see you next year at the next IGF, maybe the same workshop on the OKE, if we agree. Thank you very much.
(Applause)
(End of session)